Tuesday, 27 October 2015

I have been so busy this past week. Mostly I have been busy procrastinating! (As I do!) My daughter's sister-in-law was married last weekend and one of my granddaughters was a flower girl. She had her two eldest of her four nieces be flower girls which left two little girls without a fancy dress so my daughter offered to make dresses for all four girls. Four dresses is quite a lot and I offered to help. Jess did all the cutting out and the basic sewing and I did the finishing. This is my granddaughters at their fitting.

My daughter and her three lovelies

She loooooves this dress!

And we had two birthdays. Well, four if you count extended family, so there were lots of birthday dinners to cook and go out for. This is my baby who turned 15. Fifteen!!! So strange to have no little kids at my house. We had little kids for so long.

Lighting the sparkler on his cake

Oh. And at one of those birthday dinners we ate some of the broccoli I grew in our backyard. It was delicious!

I'm hoping to get more sewing done this week. I have been English paper piecing ever since I last blogged, but it doesn't look that different! Perhaps I will do some quilting!

Wednesday, 14 October 2015

It's spring! Isn't this a lovely blossom tree? I discovered this one Sunday morning and took a million photos (well, about twenty or so, almost a million, right?). There were lots of bees admiring this tree too.

A million years ago (everything today seems to come in multiples of a million) I joined the Patchwork Apple's block of the month club for Sue Daley's Pies and Tarts quilt. In the true tradition of block's of the month I still haven't finished it despite working on it for years. (I think the top is finished. Possibly. I'm thinking about it and considering it.) I really loved the look of the Pies and Tarts so when I heard that Sue Daley had released another block of the month and that Hettie's Patch were running a club for it I was in! I was keen the first month, and then my interest tapered of slightly completely. (Also in the tradition of block of the month clubs!) This quilt is a hexagon quilt with a difference. The difference being that some of the hexagons are built from other English paper piecing shapes. I was looking for a handwork project to do a couple of weeks ago and dragged it out of the cupboard and have been working on it ever since.

I think I was inspired somewhat by the show and tell at Gum Valley Patchwork's Stitch in Spring. A lovely lady by the name of Vicky had made a couple of beautiful hand stitched hexagon quilts which just took my breath away. Of course, her hexagons were smaller than this, but I'm still claiming her as my inspiration! (These are 2 1/2 inch hexagons - that's the measurement of each side) I've decided to alternate a "built" hexagon with a solid hexagon in the hopes of getting this finished some time in the next decade. (Vicky's huge quilts were completed inside a year each!)

In other news I have been gardening. My boys built me raised garden beds following a design by Jess and now I have food happening in my garden! This is a teeny tiny broccoli that I photographed yesterday. Today I have some lettuce to plant out and I'm hoping to pop a bunch of seeds in at the same time. Wish me luck!

Friday, 2 October 2015

Friday! My how the week passes! I sat in front of the computer on Monday morning to write a blogpost, and now it's Friday! (I haven't been sitting here all week - it just feels like it!) So, here's my Monday blogpost about my finishes from last week.

My first finish was a chevron quilt I started last year when we were living in North Adelaide. My daughter Jessica quilted it for me and I finally bound it!

I used a Bonnie and Camille diagonal stripe to bind it. It made really lovely binding. I bought a metre of this fabric from Lenora at Elm Grove Patchwork in Nullewarre Victoria. I made it all up into binding and used it for the two quilts I finished last week.

This is the chevron quilt up close on my clothesline after being washed. I love the quilting that Jess did for me.

The second quilt I finished was my beehive beauty that I assembled from the blocks I was sent by my swarmies. I joined the Instagram bee run by Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts and I chose the double star block designed by Christa at Christa Quilts I love how it turned out. This is me quilting the quilt. Even though I did a lot of straight line quilting I did it all free motion. (Hence they are wonky straight lines, but exactly what I was looking for.)

Quilted, trimmed and ready to bind. Did I mention that I love this binding?

I backed this quilt with a Denyse Schmidt fabric. It looked awesome with the binding too!

Here it is on the clothesline. Wet and scrunched up from the washing machine.

And here it is in it's intended place above my bed. Yeah. I'm not much into making my bed. Perhaps I should have cropped that shot? Oh well. I love it. I love the colours and I am thrilled with the quilting. Next up I have a couple of quilts in various stages of finish that I want to use on my bed. One is together as a top and the other is blocks. It will be a while before I get to them I think. They will be big quilts and I need to do some more quilting practice on little quilts before I start to quilt them. If I'm looking at them every day I will want to love the quilting on them!